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No more sex for weeds on the farm

A CONTRACEPTIVE spray for plants is being developed that could eradicate certain weeds from farmers’ fields and cut herbicide use.

Ed Newbigin of Melbourne University and colleagues at CSIRO, Australia’s national research organisation, are planning to exploit the mechanism that prevents certain plants self-fertilising. They want to target the “self-incompatibility” (SI) receptor present on the stigma of some plant species, which blocks self-pollination by binding to a pollen protein specific to that individual plant.

The team is developing a molecule that will bind to the SI receptor in wild radish, a weed that infests barley, wheat and rape (canola). This …